Overview

Michigan opens the season against Florida in the first of four games on the schedule that doesn't have the Wolverines projected as a multi-score favorite. There's a growing sentiment Michigan could turn this into just such a game, however, now that ten—ten!—Gator players are suspended for this weekend, most of them for getting caught up in a fraud scheme. Very on-brand, Florida.

While many of the suspended players are freshmen who weren't expected to see much of the field this early, Florida's two best offensive skill players won't play tomorrow. The Gators are breaking in a first-time starter at quarterback against a Don Brown defense boasting a hellacious defensive line. That's not an ideal combination for UF. We're also not sure if the suspensions are done yet; the investigation is ongoing.

Also their head coach totally humped a shark over the offseason. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Run Offense vs Florida

Former five-star CeCe Jefferson is a tough, versatile run defender.

Florida boasted a really impressive run defense for much of last year, holding seven of their first nine opponents below four yards per carry, including four games in which their foe couldn't crack two YPC. After injury hit the linebacker corps, however, their play dropped off; each of their last four opponents broke that four YPC barrier, with Florida State and Alabama—two admittedly great rushing offenses—going for over six yards a pop.

That dip is particularly relevant, as last year's injury replacements at linebacker are now the full-time starters. Former Michigan commit David Reese filled in admirably for new Detroit Lion Jarrad Davis at the MIKE; he gained valuable experience last year and should be solid, albeit probably not as good as the first-rounder he replaces. The starter at weakside linebacker, Vosean Joseph, is a fellow sophomore who started the bowl game when Alex Anzalone got hurt. Florida kept Iowa's run game in check in that one, so the guess here is Joseph will also be a passable starter. The sore spot may be strongside linebacker, where 6'6", 228-pound redshirt freshman Jeremiah Moon is expected to start with Kylan Johnsonbanged up. Depth will be a major concern for UF if any starter has to exit for an extended period.

The defensive line will test Michigan's reshuffled O-line. While tackles Caleb Brantley and Joey Ivey are gone, redshirt juniors Taven Bryan and Khairi Clark both impressed as rotation DTs last year; all three of Bryan's TFLs came during the final six games. At end, former five-star CeCe Jefferson is arguably Florida's best defender, and five of his 6.5 TFLs last season were against the run. While he's only 6'1", 261, he can hold up at tackle as well, though that's something more relevant to the next section.

Michigan's starters against Florida's starters should be a relatively even matchup. Where the Wolverines can exploit UF is when the backups rotate through. While they have plenty of depth at end, the listed DT backups on UF's depth chart are true freshman Kyree Campbell and 263-pound redshirt sophomore Luke Ancrum, who barely saw the field last year. We may even see true freshman Tedarrell Slaton, whom you may remember as the mammoth OG/DT prospect Michigan was hoping to land in the 2017 class. The Wolverines may want to utilize some tempo to lock the backups on the field when they get the chance.

KEY MATCHUP: MIKE ONWENU and PATRICK KUGLER versus KHAIRI CLARK. Clark projects to be Florida's best interior run defender at 6'1", 315, and he'll test Kugler's strength. Kugler should get plenty of help from his guards, and this will be the first time we get to see how Onwenu holds up over the course of an entire college football game. If the interior line battles the starting DTs to a draw, Michigan's RBs should be able to break a couple big plays against the inexperienced linebackers.

Hello. You have made it to the end. This year's preview checks in at 50,962 words. Also this year's edition had approximately four hours of audio content. Many thanks to Sam Webb, Steve Lorenz, Isaiah Hole, Ace, Adam, Seth, Eric, Bryan, and Patrick, who were either quoted repeatedly or provided the images that are such an integral part of the whole.

ELSEWHERE

There's an entire school of analytical thought dedicating to pooh-poohing the results of individual games that are determined by small sample freak events like fumble recoveries, missed field goals, and players falling down and clutching at their hamstrings over the hushed, lilting tones of Fox's injured player version of the Football Robot Murder March before playing a bunch of commercials for truck boner dorito pills. The entirety of college football is an epistemological project proving that human beings cannot actually determine whether football teams are better than each other.

After a long and fruitful discussion, two college football fans agree on the importance of Conference Championships in the Playoff Picture

In this uncertain sports environment, it is silly to try to make predictions.

The game can’t save you. But practice, though: practice can. Practice is hard, practice requires work, but practice keeps things alive—in games, in kindness, in love. Practice is hard because it has to be sustained through tedium. The urge to hide, to tunnel away from the endless sea of trash and malice, isn’t a discipline. Fighting that urge is, and it takes some kind of practice to beat it even once. It takes so much more if getting through all that practice means moving across and through a series of days that will make you question whether any of us survive any of it.

We are talking about a coach whose competitive instinct borders on the pathological. His obsession with preparation is so extreme and all-consuming that there is now a rule unofficially named for him banning off-campus practice sessions during college vacation. (He celebrated the introduction of the rule by taking his team to Rome, where the winner of an intra-squad essay competition was allowed to accompany him during an audience with Pope Francis.) He waited so long to release this year's official Michigan roster that Rutgers actually filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act hoping to receive it.

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Last year was hope and then expectation and then a deep, abiding hurt that still makes me sigh when people say "JT was short" not because they're wrong or the refs were wrong but because I don't want to address that particular dark time in my past. Put me on a couch and try to get me to work through my feelings about this and I will clam up and think about recruiting, always recruiting. Always forward, never back.

So too you and everyone you know and like and everyone you don't know and hate for no reason other than their tendency to dress up in the wrong colors and sing an abomination they term a fight song. Never backwards, which is weakness. Michigan State fans clinging to something that was while looking at their depth chart. Michigan fans citing all-time records. Nebraska: university, state, all of it, lock stock and barrel.

For the next four months, nothing has ever happened before. The future is a vast plain of possibility. I can pick out two distant hills who are likely 2020 offensive line recruits. Closer to hand, a running back who coaches football when he's not playing football and scouts football when he's neither playing or coaching football, a fullback we've named "Ol' Murderface," a coach who is always himself at maximum volume, a stadium that is the second largest city in Michigan six times a year, a new generation of men in winged helmets who know only that they are on a team, and that this may be the only team they'll ever really be on.

Nothing but the present, nothing but the ever-sailing now, for 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 Saturdays. Relief, for a time, from phantoms and ghosts.

Heuristicland

Turnover Margin

The theory of turnover margin: it is pretty random. Teams that find themselves at one end or the other at the end of the year are likely to rebound towards the average. So teams towards the top will tend to be overrated and vice versa. Nonrandom factors to evaluate: quarterback experience, quarterback pressure applied and received, and odd running backs like Mike Hart who just don't fumble.

Year

Margin

Int +

Fumb +

Sacks +

Int -

Fumb -

Sacks -

2007

0.15 (41st)

14

15

2.46(33rd)

14

13

2.17 (67th)

2008

-.83 (104th)

9

11

2.42(33rd)

12

18

1.83 (57th)

2009

-1.00 (115th)

11

5

1.83(68th)

15

13

2.33 (83rd)

2010

-0.77(109th)

12

7

1.38(98th)

15

14

0.85(10th)

2011

+0.54 (25th)

9

20

2.31 (29th)

16

6

1.38 (33rd)

2012

-0.69 (99th)

7

11

1.69 (69th)

19

8

1.38 (28th)

2013

+0.38(33rd)

17

9

1.9 (64th)

13

8

2.77 (109th)

2014

-1.33 (124th)

5

5

2.4 (49th)

18

8

2.2 (63rd)

2015

-0.31 (92nd)

10

2

2.5 (32nd)

10

6

1.4 (28th)

2016

+0.54 (24th)

13

6

3.54(5th)

7

5

1.69 (39th)

Michigan had an uptick from their incredibly bad fumble luck from a year ago but were still shorted their fair share of turnovers on defense. Despite having one of the best secondaries and most chaos-inducing defenses in the country a year ago they were only 67th in turnovers acquired.

They were probably a bit lucky on the other end, with just 12 giveaways. (Three of them had to happen at the worst possible time, naturally.) That was fifth nationally.

There does seem to be a Harbaugh effect with the interceptions, which have been at blog-era lows the last two years. With a returning starter those should remain low. De'Veon Smith and mostly good pass protection are the main drivers for the low fumble loss rate. One of those is definitely gone and the other may or may not be.

You'd expect both turnovers caused and lost to tick upwards this year; Michigan should be solidly positive again. "Expect" is a dangerous term when dealing with something so high-variance, of course.

Position Switches

Theory of position switches: if you are starting or considering starting a guy who was playing somewhere else a year ago, that position is in trouble. There are degrees of this. When Notre Dame moved Travis Thomas, a useful backup at tailback, to linebacker and then declared him a starter, there was no way that could end well. Wisconsin's flip of LB Travis Beckum to tight end was less ominous because Wisconsin had a solid linebacking corps and Beckum hadn't established himself on that side of the ball.

The dossier of position switches:

Mason Cole to left tackle. Mandatory after the Newsome injury, and while he's going to be fine he's not an ideal left tackle. Concern: moderate.

Jon Runyan to right tackle. Runyan was never considered a tackle until this spring, and he almost won the job. Despite this being a minor shift, not offense to defense, this one is a bit alarming. Concern: moderate.

Metellus and Hudson flip viper/SS. As discussed in the 5Q5A post, these are close to interchangeable. Both guys are taking snaps at the other spot even now, because Michigan likes to flip 'em on motion. Concern: zero.

Ben Mason to fullback. Ordained from the time of his commitment and necessary for next year. Concern: zero.

James Hudson to OT. If anything this is encouraging about Michigan DT depth. Concern: zero.

Nate Johnson to CB. Probably more about Johnson getting buried at WR and Washington's departure than anything else, but the flip does speak to Michigan's scary CB depth. Concern: slight.

An Embarrassing Prediction, No Doubt

Worst Case Barring Extreme Injury Scenarios

This is another year where Michigan has a lot of games they should win. I can't find it now but I saw that one sportsbook had season lines up and only four games were less than two touchdown spreads. 8-4.

Best Case

Michigan can enter the OSU game undefeated if they win those 14-point spread games, beat a Florida team that may arrive in Dallas with only six eligible players, and win at Penn State and Wisconsin, teams that exploded into dust with one glance at a Don Brown defense. And yeah they have a shot at OSU at home. 12-0.

Final Verdict

Not a lot of drama here. They've got four games with relatively tight spreads and they're likely to split those games.

OOC

9/2

Florida (N)

Lean to win

9/9

Cincinnati

Must win

9/16

Air Force

Must win

Conference

9/24

@ Purdue

Must win

10/1

MSU

Must win

10/8

@ Indiana

Must win

10/22

@ PSU

Tossup

10/29

Rutgers

Must win

11/5

Minnesota

Must win

11/12

@Maryland

Must win

11/19

@ Wisconsin

Tossup

11/26

Ohio State

Lean to loss

Absent:

Northwestern, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois

I do think Michigan should expect to beat Florida, PSU, and Wisconsin, but by "expect to beat" I mean "there is a 60-65% chance Michigan wins against team X". They should expect to lose to OSU, but in a 40-60 kind of way. 10-2 is right down the middle, then, as there's always a chance that football does football things to you and Michigan is suddenly faced with a feisty Piggy or something.

1. HOW ARE WE GONNA SURVIVE MAN? THEY'RE ALL GONE!

the dearly departed [Eric Upchurch]

Survive is easy. See Gary, Rashan. Thrive is harder. Michigan's talent drain has been significantly overblown in the national media, a land where Mo Hurst isn't a starter and there are significant question marks about Gary and Chase Winovich, but... uh... there was still a lot of it. See last year's NFL draft.

The main thing offsetting the talent drain is the Don Brown effect. His defenses have taken significant steps—sometimes massive leaps—forward in year two:

[metrics are yards per play, FEI, and S&P+; national ranks are presented. final column is the average of the three. Bolded years are Brown years.]

Year

TEAM

YPP

FEI

S&P+

AVG

2008

Maryland

56

63

75

65

2009

Maryland

87

64

44

65

2010

Maryland

14

20

31

22

2011

Maryland

83

74

102

86

2010

UConn

40

40

63

48

2011

UConn

56

23

34

38

2012

UConn

8

22

38

23

2013

UConn

64

56

72

64

2012

Boston College

63

81

80

75

2013

Boston College

92

98

80

90

2014

Boston College

30

68

36

45

2015

Boston College

1

5

3

3

Forward motion for Michigan is impossible after last year's elite outfit, but the table makes it clear that imbibing Don Brown's defense is a multi-year process. Michigan has a bunch of new starters; none are freshmen, so they're actually more experienced in Brown's defense than the departed were. This resulted in a lot less pointing during the spring game, and an absence of the big safety busts that cropped up at inopportune times last year. (Except for that walk-on against Gentry.)

That slice out of the circle of excellency is yards per completion. You'll note that Michigan was fantastic at preventing 20 yard passes, and just average at preventing 30 yard passes—the implication is that when Michigan busted they busted huge, as they did against Colorado early and FSU late. The above is what the platonic opposite of a bend-but-don't break defense looks like statistically.

Getting a little bit more bend in the defense will help. Michigan's going to lose ground everywhere else but if they can pull that yards per completion number up 60 or so spots that'll go a long way towards treading water. This is in fact the pattern Brown's defenses follow:

And though the Eagles had been vulnerable to giving up big plays on the back end in Brown’s first few seasons in Chestnut Hill, by Year 3 they got the personnel and the scheme to the point where they were solid on both ends. In 2013, Brown’s first year helming the defense, BC gave up 47 passing plays of more than 20 yards (tied for no. 97 nationally); in his last year, it gave up just 29 (tied for no. 10).

Michigan isn't going to be bend-but-don't-break, but they'll be moreso than last year, when they were awesome... and brittle.

The other arrow pointing in the right direction is turnover acquisition. Michigan was unlucky last year. They generated a ton of sacks (5th nationally) but did not see that pay off with a lot of turnovers. Despite having that defense above Michigan only managed 13 turnovers acquired, 67th. That's just bad luck, not dependent on coaching. Brady Hoke's first defense recovered 20 fumbles; Harbaugh's first team recovered 2. QED. They should expect to be favored by the turnover gods more this year, he said for the 100th straight time.

The rest of it is having a lot of talent. Michigan has two certain first round picks on the DL and three more guys who are highly likely to be drafted just in the front seven. The other six are too young to tell but are mostly tracking well outside of corner. These previews aren't afraid to hand out 1s and 2s when the situation appears to warrant it; Michigan is not in that situation. Some units will be average; some will be excellent, and Michigan will mostly maintain as they shift into a mode where consistency of approach and recruiting allows them to expect top defenses annually.

For 2017, instead of previewing conferences division-by-division, I decided to preview the 64 Power Five teams individually, so I ranked them and counted down from the bottom.

I created a ranking system based heavily off of Bill Connelly’s S&P+ rankings: half of the ranking comes from the S&P rankings from the past five seasons among Power Five teams (1/3 of that number is 2016’s ranking; 1/3 is the average from 2014-2016, 1/3 is the average from 2012-2016); half comes from two component parts of his 2017 S&P+ projections, weighed evenly – recruiting impact and returning production – and ranked 1 through 64. There is no subjectivity involved in these rankings and they skew towards emphasizing where the teams were according the 2016 S&P+. I think it serves as a decent way to sequence these previews.

[Sponsor Note: Joe Pichey of GoBlueBBQ makes and writes these. He’ll also be grilling in Dallas tomorrow in Lot 11 and welcomes any MGoBlog readers to come by and sample.

He can do this because we have a sponsor:

It rhymes with “Santana”. It’s amazing. It’s at your local Kroger’s, Meijer’s, Busch’s, and hundreds of other stores. Seriously pick up some Sriracha Carrot and maybe White Bean for tomorrow’s game. Seriously.]

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The wait is over. The season kicks off in a few days and we can officially fire up the tailgate gear. If you are coming down here to the Dallas area, don’t forget your cowboy hats, leather chaps and spurs. We’d like to thank Matt from Lantana Hummus for sponsoring this years recipes and providing some fantastic goodies to munch on during halftime. It’s going to be a fun one, you can bet on that. We’ve added a new toy to the GOBLUEBBQ grilling arsenal for this season and she needs a name. Name the pit and receive VIP coupons for free hummus and a bag of Lump Charcoal from Fogo. Here are a few pics of the new pit. If you are coming down for the game, check us out in LOT 11 as we are doing a little tailgating for the opener.

Now onto the first weeks recipe, or should I say technique. This is a cool little way to fire up some protein more than a recipe. It’s cooking on a himalayan salt block. This can be done on a gas grill, charcoal grill or even on your gas stovetop. The salt block can also be used a serving plate for hot or cold foods. I’ve read where it has some sort of nutritional and spiritual benefits, but I use it because it’s a little different than just tossing meats on a grill. Today, we fired up the gas grill and had some scallops, ribeye and sausages laying around. We also found a hunk of grilling cheese in the back of the MGOFRIDGE.

[hit THE JUMP if you’ve had lunch today. If not…um…you may not want to see this on an empty stomach]